


Blood Countess

by iwritesometimes



Series: castlevania prompts [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 04:33:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18403172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwritesometimes/pseuds/iwritesometimes
Summary: Our three intrepid heroes versus one of Alucard's more bloodthirsty relations.





	Blood Countess

**Author's Note:**

> From a prompt by [@northstarfan](http://northstarfan.tumblr.com) on Tumblr: "The trio vs Elizabeth Bartley!" Being a Castlevania pleb, I had to research who she even was, and then just smooshed her together with random factoids I read about Báthory Erzsébet to get a bit of fun video game violence. Unbetaed - let's DO THIS!!!!

It’s only good fortune the likes of which Adrian is both unused to and suspicious of that the attack comes when Sypha and Trevor are paying him a visit. Then again, it’s hard to call anything “fortunate” that leads to the mutilated body of a local goatherd and his wife, as well as their whole flock, impaled on stakes around the perimeter of the Belmont estate in the cold light of a December morning. Adrian stands looking up at the grisly remains with a grim look on his face, Sypha beside him and Trevor already beginning the unhappy work of cutting down the pikes, horror and anger in every swing of the axe.

“We should tell the villagers,” Sypha says quietly. “They...might listen to me, and stay in their homes.”

Adrian says nothing for a moment; a stake falls with a sickening thud, frost and goat bones crunching. Then, quietly, he murmurs, “I’m afraid that won’t do any good.”

He’s right. He wishes he wasn’t. The last glowing embers of the pyre they built to burn the bodies are still smoking at dawn the next day when the three of them return to the castle after a night spent fruitlessly scouring the forest, only to find three more mutilated human bodies on the castle’s doorstep. Sypha swallows a cry; they are...they are only children, three young women no older than sixteen. Alucard learned enough about medicine from his mother and enough about human death from his father to know that the girls died horribly and slow, but he tells neither Belmont nor Sypha this. He suspects they already know.

There is a letter, clutched in the frozen, bloodied hand of one of the victims. Adrian takes it, not thinking of what he is doing, unable to allow his brain to approach it if he wants to remain in control of his fury, but it’s too much for Trevor, who turns on a heel to stride toward the treeline and heaves up the meager contents of his stomach before he can reach it. Adrian’s hand shakes as he breaks the wax seal, pressed with a mark he recognizes.

_Their fear tasted so sweet, Alucard._

_The crossroads at midnight. Bring the Dark Lord’s remains._

***

“I don’t like this,” Belmont says for the fourth time; it had been unnecessary even the first, and now it just makes Adrian’s teeth itch. Sypha beats him to the dirty, quelling look, and Trevor grunts defensively, hand tightening around the Morning Star. “Well, I don’t. We have no idea how many of them there are or what they’re capable of.”

“Oh, we can safely assume they’re capable of anything,” Adrian says, low and deliberate. “Erzsébet never quite learned the meaning of self-control.”

“Is everyone you’re related to so charming, Alucard?” Trevor rumbles, acid in his tone. Adrian bares his teeth at him and gets the satisfaction of seeing Belmont flinch. Before he can offer anything further, however, his ears prick to the faintest rustle in the undergrowth, and he peers with eyes hazing crimson into the inky blackness of the nearby stand of alders. Sypha and Trevor see his head swivel, each of them stiffening in readiness and alarm.

At once, a dozen wraithlike women all in black emerge from the trees, just eerily floating white faces and hands, and in their midst, a flame of red and gold and pink silk, is a taller, painfully elegant woman so beautiful she hurts to look at. Adrian hears both Sypha and Trevor sigh softly at the sight of her, snaps, “Be on your guard,” not loud, but commanding. A laugh like chimes fills the air of the empty crossroads as the retinue of ghostly killers moves across the open field toward them, too weirdly quick and smooth to be walking.

“Why, my dearest Alucard, are you not going to introduce us?” Erzsébet says, her soft, melodious voice seeming to be in their minds rather than actually spoken. “I won’t be seen to be rude in front of your traveling companions.”

“Cousin,” Alucard greets her flatly. “Unfortunately, etiquette is the least of my concerns at the moment. You must know I won’t give you what you seek.”

“What I know is that eventually Wallachia will run out of sweet fresh virgins for me to leave at your door, and I shall have to go further abroad for fresh meat.” She and her coterie have drifted close enough now to see the silvery glint of moonlight on her fangs when she speaks. Her heavy, dark eyes gleam back at them out of a face from a masterful painting, long, black hair falling over her shoulders like water, disappearing into the darkness around her. “My own lands are running a little dry, these days. These are the best they had to offer.” She gestures regally to the women in black around her, all of whom stare back motionlessly at the three hunters huddled close in the pool of light under the lamppost. All of them vampires, and no doubt deadly, if Erzsébet thought them worth sparing the usual ravages of her appetites.

“You’re not leaving Wallachia alive,” Trevor tells her, barely controlled rage trembling in his voice; for all that he is not quite the average Belmont, when it came down to it, Trevor still relished the hunt and the kill of Adrian’s kind. Adrian had found it distasteful in the past, but at present…

“And who will stop me? You?” Erzsébet says, her gaze swinging to Trevor, with all the heat and weight of centuries and thousands of dead innocents. She leans in toward him a little, the loose neck of her dress slipping down a fraction by design. Adrian knows without looking where Trevor’s eyes are straying; he feels the man shudder, and suddenly his sword is in his hand, a warning gleam in the lamplight as he raises it.

“And me,” he says, voice like the steel of his blade, at the same moment Sypha says, “And me,” as flame blossoms in her palms. Adrian can’t help the faint smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth; trust Sypha to recover her wits first. Trevor isn’t all that far behind, however, Morning Star jingling as he passes the weighted end into his ready hand and lowers his stance to attack.

Erzsébet’s beautiful, serene expression suddenly _twists_ , and it’s hard to believe in that instant that she had ever looked anything but terrifying. Pulling back, she raises her hand high in the air, and immediately the white faces of her guards melt away into the night as four glowing points of light like stars burst into existence around Erzsébet. “Pitiful mortals,” she intones, rising into the air as her stars orbit slowly around her. Her fangs grow long and drip. “ _Traitor!_ ” she hisses at Alucard. “I will see the Dark Lord’s unholy work completed if I have to snap every bone in your body to do it!”

A black flash from the corner of his right eye is all the warning he has, before a wraith tears through the midst of them; the lightning-quick sparkle of a blade, and he barely gets his sword up in time to deflect it, sucking a startled gasp through his teeth. _Fuck_ , they’re fast. Another flash, this time from the left, and he swings his sword, but too late; pain blooms in his side from the bite of a dagger, slashed too quickly to see, and then there is another figure, and another, cutting blood-red gashes in Trevor’s side, in Sypha’s hood - nearly taking off her ear.

“Oh, fuck this,” Belmont mutters, the chain of his whip uncurling with furious grace in his hand, whirling into a defensive screen around him; there is the bright, startling ring of metal on metal, and a white face stares through the glinting coils, fury in the black eyes and bared fangs, sword upraised and vibrating.

“Indeed,” Adrian agrees wholeheartedly, and swings his sword out in front of himself to give them all a little more room, even as he shifts into his wolf form, with its lower profile and better sense of smell and - importantly - significantly improved bite strength. With a snarl he leaps out of the circle of light, following the faintest whisper of air as it breezes by and sinking his teeth deep into...something. Something that cracks very satisfyingly between his jaws, as a high-pitched shriek tears the night. He jerks his head hard, flinging the vampire like a ragdoll against the ground, whereupon he pounces before she can recover, teeth flashing into her throat. Then he leaps again, claws raking, but he mostly seems to be getting clothing and hair.

“Sypha, stay close,” Belmont says, eyes darting between the white-and-black figures circling them just at the edge of the light, and the radiant floating menace above their heads. Erzsébet seems to be gathering energy for something, the air around her growing thick and hot. Sypha was already edging closer, their hips bumping lightly within the relatively safe clear spot created by his whirling whip, but the respite can’t last for long. She quickly swipes the blood away from the side of her face, quick flicker of her eyelids the only indication of pain, then brings her index fingers to her lips and breathes intensity into her flames. She traces a wide circle with her arms and around them rises a wall of fire; chattering screams of frustration and pain rise from outside it as the assassins shrink away from the deadly flames, and Sypha smiles a self-satisfied smile.

More snarling and ripping sounds from beyond the firelight preface Alucard bursting back through the wall, quickly falling out of his wolf shape and tumbling over and over a few times in his human form, faintly smoking. Quickly he pats out the singed edges of his cloak and stands, golden eyes still a little feral. “She’s transforming,” he warns, but by the time he’s said it, it’s happening: Erzsébet’s form seems to stretch and grow, her shape shimmering in and out of existence.

“Ssso you can play with fire, too, little Sssspeakerrrr?” That voice that was so musical and bell-like before is now more the sound of fingernails scraping glass, and then it is not a voice at all, but a high-pitched, evil hissing, reverberating from the massive green-scaled coils of a gigantic snake spilling out from under the flowing red gown. Her fangs lengthen obscenely, face distorting into something not quite animal, but certainly not human, and she looms over them, flamelike dress transmuting to actual fire wreathing her body. Those rotating stars swing inward, spiraling into the heart of the flame and heat, and then burst out from her, four blazing streaks of light. Trevor shouts in surprise and flings an arm around Sypha, both of them crumpling immediately into the dirt as fire shoots overhead; Adrian leaps into the air, flipping backward over one simmering contrail only to be blasted earthward by a second. Lights pop in his vision and he feels his skin blistering, struggling to heal; from a few feet away, Sypha cries out in pain, black shadows descending upon the humans before they can get back to their feet, and for a moment panic rises in Adrian’s throat. But then he hears the wet, rattling gasp of a vampire solidly speared through the heart, and he blinks to focus his eyes in time to see a forest of icy spines thrusting up from the ground all around them as Sypha lies facedown, palms flat to the ground, willing the water in the soil and air to take deadly form. Two of the black-clad ghosts are dissipating into smoke and ash before they realize they are dead, and another has been pinned cleanly through the midsection and now writhes there like a beetle on a pin.

The towering gorgon screams overhead, flames reigniting between her hands as she readies another attack, but Adrian leaps to his feet, fear for Trevor and Sypha making him double-quick, and hops with animal grace right to the top of the lamppost, flips higher, calling his sword to his hand already singing downward, arcing cleanly through both wrists. The sound she makes then threatens to split Adrian’s head wide open. He staggers as he’s falling, only barely getting the sword stuck into her serpent’s body and using the drag through her flesh to slow his momentum, raking a long, ugly gash in her side. He’s still batted aside by the clublike end of her tail, but manages to land on his feet, winded, but alright.

Trevor and Sypha are up again, the Morning Star flashing once more with purpose to fend off the remaining wraiths while Sypha plants both feet wide and gathers herself for a monumental burst of energy. A black shape suddenly streaks into the light toward her, and Adrian springs, throws himself between Sypha and danger, just in time to catch the business end of a fucking spear, partly with his sword, mostly with his shoulder. He grits his teeth in pain and, arching, throws the woman back, blood pouring freely from his shoulder and a soft, agonized sound rattling in his throat. The assassin delicately twirls her spear, makes a show of licking a rivulet of his blood from her forearm all the way up the shaft of her weapon to the trident blade; he hisses at her, enraged, and lunges forward, right arm hanging dead for the moment while his shoulder knits. He’s almost as deadly with his left, but his opponent cleverly redirects the jabbing point of his sword once, twice, a third time with the forked end of the spear, and then she’s sliding it up the length of his sword, blades screeching together, her eyes glinting murderously. It comes to Adrian in a flash, the embarrassing memory jolting him to action, and just as she closes with him, he rams his forehead into the bridge of her nose and prays Belmont doesn’t see it. No one could have been more shocked at the son of Dracula braining an assailant with his skull than his assailant herself, who staggers back, eyes already swelling shut, just off-balance enough for Adrian to lop off her head.

A violent displacement of air at his back recalls Adrian’s attention to the hunter and the Speaker behind him, and he looks to see Sypha dwarfed by the gout of flame she’s conjured, right into the gorgon’s hideous face. Trevor visibly falters, eyes flying wide at the size and intensity of the fireball; the wind blows hot in his and Adrian’s faces, bringing the smell of charred flesh and Erzsébet’s ragged screaming, and then she’s...melting, or so it seems, diminishing in a mirage-like wave until she is, once again, a woman in red silks, hunched and panting, eyes blazing red and hair a shining black halo suspended around her. Her remaining guards gather behind her again - only four left, all of them looking tattered and a little wild-eyed. One of them even reaches out hesitantly for her mistress as if to pull her back, only for Erzsébet to snatch her arm in one bloody hand tipped with razor-sharp nails and twist it until it breaks. The black-clad woman whimpers in pain and draws away behind her fellows, all of them coalescing into a single dark shape behind the Blood Countess.

“If you strike me down here, you murderous whoreson,” Erzsébet growls in three octaves, gaze burning on Adrian as if she could incinerate him where he stands, “you cannot imagine the destruction I will rain down on you and yours in times to come.”

Something in her voice rings so certain that Adrian feels hot dread pool in his stomach, but he clenches his teeth and carefully stretches out his right arm, feeling the bones grind and pop back into place. He settles his sword again in his right hand, straightens, left arm folded neatly behind his back as he meets her eye. “So be it, Lady Báthory. Then I will strike you down again, and again, as many times as it takes.”

She says nothing and gives no warning; in the next moment, there are simply four of her, phasing rapidly in and out of existence, arrayed in a straight line before them. The spectral images flash disorientingly, and then one solidifies, in front of Trevor, who can only partially dodge the fireball that erupts from her hand and catches his forearms raised defensively. He staggers back with a pained oath and claws off his smoldering bracers. Sypha flings a smaller fireball of her own, exhausted from magical exertion but interposing herself between Trevor and Erzsébet anyway. But the woman is already gone again, and Sypha’s spell fires off into nothingness. Adrian tries to follow the flickering shapes of her illusory form, but the wraiths are back to harry him, all four of them now, darting in and away, each time leaving a new and painful little slice across his chest and belly and face. And then there is Erzsébet again with a handful of fire that Adrian only just ducks, ramming his sword forward in the same instant.

He thinks at first he’s hit her, because his sword seems to meet resistance, but then it’s wrenched out of his hand and discorporates as Erzsébet herself splinters into multiples again. Adrian calls his sword back from the ether, only for a ghostly hand to pass straight through it and knock it out of existence again. He growls in frustration and leaps backward, trying to create space enough to rush her again, but he feels the bite of cold steel in his back and gasps in pain as the wraith darts away, her dagger bloodied and gleaming in the moonlight. The countess reappears in front of the hunters, who fling themselves apart as fire blazes between them; Trevor hurls the club end of his whip toward her and it passes through thin air, her figure blurring so dizzyingly fast none of them can figure out where she’ll be in time to hurt her at all. And meanwhile, the assassins grow bolder, circling like sharks scenting blood, and Sypha is knocked to her knees, blood streaming from a dozen or more gashes in her cloak and one wound in her calf bleeding especially heavily. Trevor whips Morning Star around them again in a bid for a moment to breathe, and Adrian catches his dark, fearful look from across the road and knows they can’t do this much longer.

He steadies himself, ignoring the pain shooting up his spine, and recalls his sword again - or tries to, but it flickers in his hand without actually materializing, then disappears, then reappears. In Erzsébet’s hand. He ducks a wild, inexpert swing and makes a grab for the weapon, but she is already gone. “Ah, _enough_!” he shouts, diving toward the gleaming shape of the assassin’s discarded spear on the ground and raising it, then, gathering his strength for a final push, phasing out of sight himself. In this in-between state, he sees differently, registering time as slower than normal; he can see the afterimage of Erzsébet’s movements like this, bright outlines of where she’s disturbed the fabric of reality, where her body is displacing air and heat. He keeps moving, the two of them almost in a dance with each other, each looking for an opening while trying not to leave one of their own.

Then, like a premonition... _there_ _!_ Adrian thrusts the spear forward with all his strength, and he feels it connect - really connect, this time, metal in meat, and Erzsébet shudders. He feels it in the haft of the spear. She fades into existence with the spear lodged right under her ribs, breathing shallow and expression startled. Adrian doesn’t give her an opportunity to regroup, only shouts in anger and exertion and _pushes_. She staggers backward, her weight now mostly hanging on the spear, and then Morning Star whips in, glittering death, and crashes into the side of her head, splitting her skull with a resounding crack.

A final piercing scream rends the air and Báthory Erzsébet disintegrates in a flash of light and a spatter of blood, her voluminous crimson dress fluttering empty to the ground. Adrian can only stare at it for a long, flabbergasted moment of complete, ringing silence, his brain offering helpfully, _What the fuck?_

With a faint _whoosh_ , suddenly the last of the shadowy assassins disappears, fleeing into the night. None of the hunters bothers to give chase - actually, it’s pretty uncertain any of them even could. But Adrian isn’t worried; without their mistress, the vampires won’t dare harass the nearby countryside, knowing the three of them are here to protect it. And, after all...they were themselves only Erzsébet’s most privileged victims. He doesn’t think any of them would willingly carry on her task without her there to terrorize them into it.

Trevor is kneeling next to Sypha, binding her injured leg with strips of her ruined cowl and slapping her hands away where she’s attempting to pour water from her canteen over his blistered fingers. Adrian walks mincingly over to them and leans heavily against the lamppost, still breathing shallowly against the pain as whatever internal damage that assassin’s dagger had done slowly begins to mend. “Well done, you two,” he says, voice rough. Sypha smiles wearily up at him. Belmont snorts.

“Any other bloodthirsty cousins we should know about, Alucard? Hm? Perhap a ghoul of an uncle chained up in your wine cellar?”

“No, only my thirteen feral and illegitimate children,” Adrian rasps, straightening and moving closer to help lift Sypha up off the ground. She shoots him a look of alarm, and he raises his eyebrows. “I’m kidding.”

“No, I know,” she says, and bites her lip to stifle a whimper as Adrian and Trevor lever her up and get one of her arms around each of their shoulders. “It’s just such a crazy thing for you to say I’m wondering if perhaps you concussed yourself while using your head as battering ram.”

Adrian almost winces, catches himself just in time to keep his face absolutely expressionless. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever happened to having a little class, your lordship?” Trevor says, cracking a grin quite literally through the streaks of dried blood down his face. Adrian curls his lip and for a moment thinks he won’t dignify that with a response.

But, in the end, who needs dignity? “I figure if it works for a Belmont in a bar fight, any idiot can use it to his advantage,” he drawls, as the three of them pick their way back up the road toward the shape of their cart and, more distantly, home.


End file.
